AC2:Announcements - 2003/04 - Conflagration

Teaser

Original Link (now dead) - microsoftgamesinsider.com/AC2/Episodes/Episode5/ep5_teaser.htm?nc=1

April Episode: "Conflagration"

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The Human sighed a low, lingering moan as she fell to the ground. Reebur lifted his head and loosed a victory howl to the heavens, a deafening croak that emanated from deep within his chest and filled the jungle around the ruined outpost. He inspected his victim, a slight Human female. Her skin was dry and revolting, and the top of her head was a tangled mass of yellow whiskers. He gave the remains a final kick.

Reebur remembered clearly the night, months ago, when a desiccated creature from Burun legend appeared at the tribal fire. For many years he and the others had heard whispered tales about the old ones who commanded the Gurog, ancient creatures so long dead that no moisture remained in their bodies. Now such a being stood in front of the assemblage. The great Immortals of his tribe listened, stroking their immense chins as the ancient creature spoke.

His name was Hahnain, and he said times were changing. The Tumeroks, Humans and Lugians—vermin that Reebur's kin had helped to drive from these lands—were returning. Those Tumeroks were crawling from their hiding places, where they had cowered for centuries. Already they and their allies had made fumbling attempts to steal Drudge lands. Now, though, was an opportunity, the creature said, a chance to finally destroy these parasites. They had only to draw the vermin out, let them expose themselves to the danger. When the moment was right, the Burun would overrun them, infiltrate their shelters, and destroy them once and for all. Then the Burun would finally have freedom, along with power unlike any they had known before. All the tribes had to do was wait.

While the promise of freedom from worry was intoxicating, the past few months had been a test of patience for Reebur. They hadn't been completely inactive in those months, many raids had been made against the invaders as they tried to rebuild their disgusting hovels. His brothers had blighted the land under the command of those rattling dry bones that rode atop decaying ataurs. But Reebur believed it wasn't enough. The vermin still believed they could wrest the land from his kin, and that could not be allowed. No, nothing short of a full assault on these misshapen creatures would satisfy him. They must be eradicated.

Last night, Hahnain appeared again at the tribal fire. The Immortals of his tribe felt as Reebur did, and they said as much to the ancient creature, who spoke in soothing tones, assuring them that with patience, once again they would have their day. The moment was not quite right; they were still amassing their power. Once gathered, that power would be brought to bear on all their enemies.

In fact, Hahnain said, his desiccated lips pulled back to reveal a gaping rictus of a smile, he had come to bring them a taste of that power. He presented the Immortals with a gift, a primitive variation of a crystalline device once fashioned by the mage Asheron. This device, and more like it, would allow them to slip through portalspace to whatever location they desired. It would be their anchor, allowing the Immortals to create long-lasting portals. These portals could be used to transport more brave warriors to a battle, thus allowing the Burun to continuously assault an outpost or town. Better yet, given enough time the device could establish itself permanently where it was placed. Afterward, almost nothing would be able to disrupt a portal created by the tribe's Immortals. The land around the portal device could not be taken back; the Burun would hold it forever.

The Immortals laughed with joy over this gift. The tribe broke out in a great dance around the tribal fire, one that lasted until the first rays of morning crept over the horizon. Though exhausted from the night's revelry, the Immortals used their new gift that very morning, and Reebur had been among the first to leap through the portal. The vermin who had been on the other side were caught unaware and fell easily. Now he and his brothers had only one task, to destroy any vermin who were foolish enough to attack them. Soon this device would make this land the Burun's own.

No, it wasn't a full assault on the invaders, Reebur thought. But for now, it would do.

 

Rollout Article

Original Link (now dead) - http://ac2.turbine.com/index.php?page_id=91

April Guide: Conflagration

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Now that our April episode has launched, you'll find an exhaustive list of changes that are appearing in this episode. As always, new content is not mentioned in here; you'll need to discover that on your own. For details on upcoming episodes, please see our In Development section or our In Development forum. Also, for the latest updates on what's going on with the game, check out the State of the Code and the State of the Network.
Additional Skill Reset After seeing the responses to the skill reset we offered in March, and some of the problems players ran into when redistributing their skill credits and experience, we have decided to include one additional reset that will be available from the date our April episode launches until the date our June episode begins. You can reset all the skills on your character, regaining all the skill credits and experience points spent on those skills, by typing "/skills reset."
As with our previous reset, we wanted to give you some important reminders on this reset:

• Each character has one reset that can be used in either our April or May episodes. If the reset is not used in April or May, it will be lost when our June episode launches.
• Only characters created prior to our April episode will have access to this reset.
• Be extremely careful in how you spend your skill credits and experience! We cannot stress this enough. If you spend your experience unwisely, you may end up with an unplayable character.

Some important tips on spending your experience:

• Skills now display much more information about how they work in the examination panel. That information can be helpful in determining if you want to train the skill.
• We suggest you spend all your skill credits first, and then devote experience to the skills.
• Don't forget to train an essential skill, like a Mastery, Grand Mastery, Paragon or Adept.
• Go slowly! Don't feel obligated to spend all of your experience at once. This is especially the case if you are pursuing a new skill tree. Investigate the skills slowly, seeing how they interact and how useful you feel they are. Try to minimize how much experience you need to gain to untrain a skill you aren't pleased with.
• Be careful that you don't devote too much experience to a skill. Skill point costs can dramatically increase as you increase your skill rating.
• Remember that a skill inherits 1 point for every 10 points given to its parent. This means that it is sometimes cheaper to buy 10 points in the parent skill than purchase 1 point of the child skill.
• If you are going to rebuild your character, making only slight modifications to the distribution of their experience, you might want to write down their current skills and skill ratings.

Pet Commands In April, you will be able to issue the following commands to your pets.

• /pet name <name>
• Names the selected pet. Pet names are subject to the same name-filtering as player names. Pet names cannot be longer than 25 characters.

• /pet attack
• All pets attack selected target. Attacking a target different than the one assigned to your pets will override this command. Tactician pets and Hivekeeper pets will not respond to this command.

• /pet return
• All pets return to their master. Tactician pets, Hivekeeper pets, and Elementalist Thunderstorms, Hurricanes, Volcanic Rifts and Incendiary Clouds will not respond to this command.

• /pet die
• Selected pet dies. Tactician pets do not respond to this command.

• /pet alldie
• All your pets die. Tactician pets do not respond to this command.

• /pet buff
• All pets that have buffs cast them on their master.

• /pet heal
• All pets that have healing spells cast them on their master.

You'll be able to issue a total of five commands to your pets every five seconds. If you try to issue more commands than that, you will receive an error message and won't be able to issue any more commands until the timer has expired.
Pets will not always respond to every command, for various reasons:

• You cannot issue the attack, buff, or heal commands while mounted on an Ataur. You will be able to use the name and return commands while mounted.
• If the target of your attack command is more than 30 meters away from you, the pet will ignore your command.
• If you attack a different target from the one you've assigned to your pet, the pet will switch to your target.
• If you issue an attack command on someone in your fellowship, the pet will ignore the command.
• A pet will ignore a command if it can't perform the action. For example, a stationary pet will ignore a return command, and a pet without healing spells will ignore a heal command.
• Certain pets are not considered "managed" pets, so they will not respond to the direction of their master.

General Skill Changes

• All skills that act as "gates" to skills above them in the skill tree have had their reset timers reduced from five minutes to one second. Although you won't be able to use more than one of these gating skills at a time, you will be able to recast them quickly on yourself after you die, instead of waiting for the reset timer to expire. The reset timer has changed, but the duration of these skills has not. The affected skills are:

• Tumerok Feral Intendant: Iron Pincers, Leader of the Pack, Lumbering Might

• Tumerok Invoker: Invoke the Grandmother, Invoke the Grandfather

Class Specific Changes

• Human Melee: Two minor changes have been made to skill descriptions in this tree.

• Defensive Stance: The skill description now correctly states that it actually lowers your attack speed and not your damage.

• End Game: Since this skill does not perform critical hits, the reference to these has been removed from the description.
• Human Bounty Hunter

• Insidious Concoction: The reset timer on this skill has been reduced from five minutes to one second.
• Human Defender

• Flails: The speed of the attack animations for flails has been increased so that flails are now approximately the same speed as swords.
• Human Alchemist: Two skills have been changed in this skill tree.

• Everlasting Fire: The fire damage over time effect has been increased from 1 (L1) – 5 (L50) points of damage/second to 3 (L1) – 12 (L50) points of damage/second for 60 seconds.

• Extinguish Blaze: In addition to removing any fire effects on the target, the skill will now have a chance of giving the target complete immunity to fire effects for 60 seconds. The chance of application starts at 20% at level 1 and increases to 70% at level 50.
• Human Ranger: Three skills have been changed in this tree.

• Hunter's Intuition: This skill can now be used while wielding bows or single swords.

• Nature's Aid: The pet Lasher's hit points have been increased from 15 points per skill level to 20 points per skill level.

• Rabies: The duration of this effect has been increased from 10 seconds (L1) – 30 seconds (L50) to 10 seconds (L1) - 60 seconds (L50). (This new duration matches the durations of the Tenderize and Sanguine Orders skills found in the Tumerok Feral Intendant line.)

• Human Magic: We've sped up the animation used for many special skills, including those found in magic specialty trees, to match the speed of Tumerok magic power-up animations. In general, this will increase the speed at which many skills take effect, although offensive skills should still take longer to use than defensive skills.
• Lugian Magic: We've sped up the animation used for many special skills, including those found in magic specialty trees, to match the speed of Tumerok magic power-up animations. In general, this will increase the speed at which many skills take effect, although offensive skills will still take longer to use than defensive skills.
• Tumerok Feral Intendant: We've returned some of the power to this class's pets that was removed in March. The chart below details the changes made to these pets through our live process, and how they stand in our April episode:

Beetle

Value	Release	March	April
Health/Skill Point	20	10	20
Armor/Skill Point	2	2	2
Damage/Skill Point	6	4	4

Shreth

Value	Release	March	April
Health/Skill Point	30	30	30
Armor/Skill Point	4	2	4
Damage/Skill Point	3	2	2

Reedshark

Value	Release	March	April
Health/Skill Point	20	20	25
Armor/Skill Point	1	1	3
Damage/Skill Point	4	3	3

• Tumerok Zealot: Five skills have been changed in the Zealot tree.

• Screen: This skill simply wasn't working as designed. It now has a 15% to 85% chance of deflecting an incoming negative skill effect, depending on the skill level of the user. It won't block the damage from attacks, just additional negative effects from attacks.

• Back Breaker: This skill now does percentile-based damage against monsters, taking 0.1% (L1) to 0.33% (L50) of the creature's max Health per second for 30 seconds. As with other percentage-based harms, this is limited to 10,000 points of damage. In PvP battles, this skill has not been changed and still does 2 (L1) to 8 (L50) points of damage per second. This skill stacks with other bleeds in the Zealot tree. This effect can only be applied to the target once every two minutes.

• Bone Crusher: This skill has been revised in the same manner as Back Breaker.

• Skull Cracker: This skill has been revised in the same manner as Back Breaker.

• Spine Ripper: This skill has been revised in the same manner as Back Breaker.
• Tumerok Missile

• Critical Throw: This skill now has the 15% chance to critical hit that its description promises.
• Tumerok Claw Bearer: We've sped up the animations for the skills and auto-attacks in this tree to be roughly equivalent to a sword swing. In addition, one skill combo has been revised in this tree.

• Rend Armor/Maul Combo: Successful use of the Maul skill on a target that already has the Rend Armor effect on it now results in an additional 80 (L1) to 300 (L50) of armor bypassing damage. While the armor-reducing effect provided by Rend Armor is not removed, you must apply Rend Armor again to the target if you want to use the combo again.
• Tumerok Hivekeeper: One skill has been revised in this tree.

• Wax Statue: The hit points of the stationary pet have been increased from five points per skill level to 10 points per skill level. The power of its taunt has also been increased, so creatures should be more drawn to it.
• Tumerok Healer: Two skills have been revised in this tree.

• Protect the Flock: When the Healer uses this skill, the increase to defensive skills is applied to the Healer and all the members of his fellowship.

• Push the Limit: This skill takes Health and converts it into Vigor. Previously, the skill took 50 to 500 points of Health (depending on the skill level) and converted 300% of that Health into Vigor. It will now take 40 to 400 points of Health and convert 375% of that Health into Vigor.

Combat and Creatures

• We've implemented a non-player killer (NPK) effect that is applied to your character each time he or she is killed by another player in combat. This NPK effect prevents your character from doing damage to or taking damage from another character. It also prevents you from casting buffs on or receiving them from other players. The duration of the effect is determined randomly each time you resurrect and varies between three and five minutes.
• There was a bug that affected all skills that drained Health from the target and returned a portion of that Health to the attacker. The bug caused these skills to do more damage (instead of less) when the attacker was at full Health. This has been corrected so that these skills will not do any additional damage when the attacker is at full Health. The behavior of these skills when the attacker is damaged has not changed in any way and will return the same Health values they returned before.
• Effects that deal out Health or Vigor damage over time now prevent Health or Vigor regeneration while they are still on the target. Only after the effect expires will the target begin to regenerate normally.
• We've revised how much damage many skills will inflict with a critical hit. Skills that are not designed to deal out critical hits now do 1.2 times normal damage. Skills that are designed to dish out critical hits (which you can find out by examining the skill) and auto-attacks still do 2 times normal damage.
• Group monsters will now use their special attacks a bit more often, instead of saving those attacks for large groups of players.
• Using a saddle (which summons an Atuar mount) no longer breaks a stun or root effect. In making this fix, we changed how speed-enhancing items work, so that quest reward and speed potions now stack with speed-increasing skills and mounts. Mounts and skills still do not stack with each other.
• We've made some changes to how portals work, and you shouldn't be as vulnerable to attack while materializing from portalspace.

Quest Changes

• Due to the power of having multiple pet Tyrants, we've removed the ability for characters to receive the "Living Tyrant Heart" reward from the "Blood of Tyrants" quest multiple times. Now characters can complete the quest multiple times, but only receive the Tyrant Heart once. Characters who previously had more than one Tyrant Heart will find that all but one of their Hearts have been removed. Along with this change, we've reduced the reset timer on using the Tyrant Heart to summon a Gust Tyrant from 48 hours (real-time) to 18 hours (real-time).
• Lord Deimos, found deep in the Tyrant's Loft, is now completely immune to mesmerize effects. This immunity will be removed once the mesmerize skills have been revised in May.
• The hidden quest that allows players to pass through the final "Shades of Lost Heroes" portal, which is given to all members of a fellowship that kills "The Keeper of Lost Souls," is no longer completed for everyone in the fellowship when any member passes through the portal. Everyone in the fellowship will now be able to pass through the portal and complete the quest.
• Completing the Icefire quest now returns you to a point outside the Icefire portal, instead of transporting you to a Kingdom conflict area that is much farther away.
• The portal leading to the Golden Age Reliquary has been fixed.
• The Darkenfowl Roost quest can now be started only by characters that are level 20 or greater.
• The Mucor Mushroom quest can now be started only by characters that are level 25 or greater.
• The Broken Totem quest can now be started by characters that are level 20 instead of level 21.
• The Great Deru quest can now be started by characters that are level 25 instead of level 26.

Inventory and UI
Skill Examination The second phase of skill examination is appearing in our April episode. Most skills now display more detailed information about their effects, such as how much Health or Vigor they restore, their chance of inflicting a critical hit, and so on. A few skills with very special effects are not displaying that information at this time, but they should in future episodes. Also, skills that summon pets aren't displaying the power of those pets.
Patron Information Examining a character now displays the character's monarch and patron information.
Other Inventory and User Interface Fixes

• The amount of Health you drain from a target is now displayed both as a green number above your head (if you have combat numbers enabled) and in your chat window. The change in your Health is also displayed in the fellowship panel.
• Shore effects have been given an overhaul, and in nearly all situations are working correctly.
• The location of UI windows is being saved again.
• The color of the text in your chat windows will now immediately update to reflect any changes you've made to chat message colors in your Options panel.
• We've fixed a bug that would occasionally cause an item to be assigned to a random slot in your inventory when moving it around in your inventory.
• Stackable items can be dragged to different packs in your inventory more easily.
• Instead of being the default thrown item for your race, all thrown items now look like the item you are wielding.

The amount of Health you drain from a target is now displayed both as a green number above your head (if you have combat numbers enabled) and in your chat window. The change in your Health is also displayed in the fellowship panel. Shore effects have been given an overhaul, and in nearly all situations are working correctly. The location of UI windows is being saved again. The color of the text in your chat windows will now immediately update to reflect any changes you've made to chat message colors in your Options panel. We've fixed a bug that would occasionally cause an item to be assigned to a random slot in your inventory when moving it around in your inventory. Stackable items can be dragged to different packs in your inventory more easily. Instead of being the default thrown item for your race, all thrown items now look like the item you are wielding.
Treasure and Crafting
Critical Hit Bonus You can now find weapons that add 1% to 2% to the likelihood that your attack will do a critical hit. This bonus adds to the existing critical hit percentage that auto-attacks and some skills have; moreover, it gives a chance of inflicting a critical hit to other skills that previously had none.
New Effects Two new effects can be found on weapons in the treasure system in April:

• The first effect is a "slayer" effect increases the damage a weapon does when used against a specific type of monster; for example, you could find a sword that does increased damage against Gurog. The types of slayer weapons are geared toward the level of the player, so a higher level player should not find a Drudge slayer sword on a high level creature.
• The second effect on weapons increases the chance of inflicting a critical hit while wielding a weapon and stacks with the critical hit bonus found on certain weapons. This effect can add between 1% and 3% to the likelihood that certain skills and auto-attacks will inflict a critical hit. This means that you can potentially find a weapon that adds 5% to your chance of inflicting a critical hit on each attack.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• A bug that caused experience to be unusable if a skill was only partially untrained resurfaced in our March episode. It has been put to bed once again.
• As was discovered in our revising of the Golden Age Reliquary dungeons that portals were storing too much information, including links to locations that no longer existed. We've changed portals so they no longer store this information.
• The defense-increasing effects found on jewelry will now stack with skills that increase the character's defense ratings. This applies to existing and newly created items.
• The "Splendor" effect found on Shields is now working correctly and is reducing the wield requirement level for items.
• A number of new potion icons have been created. These new icons have allowed us to assign each type of potion its own color, to help you determine at a glance what a potion does.
• The boots from the "Shades of Lost Heroes" quest are now displaying two icons in the UI, one for the Health/Vigor effect and another for the speed-increasing effect. This will help show if the speed-increasing effect is being overridden by another speed-increasing effect.